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Gregory Porter is hard to miss. Not only is he 6ft 3 and 16stone, he also wears an eye-catching modified Kangol Summer Spitfire hat with a strap running under his chin. It covers his ears, his 12-inch-long dreadlocks, and operation scars he got as a child.
Who could mistake him for anyone else?
“For some reason English people yell out ‘Rag’n’Bone Man’ to me,” Gregory chuckles, his voice as mellow in conversation as it is in song. “There are quite a lot of differences between us” – not least our boy being white and English with a tattooed face.
“We both have interesting and both have fantastic looks. He’s awesome. I’ve also had young people yell, ‘Oi, Barry White!’” (who died in 2003…)
The double Grammy-winning American jazz singer is back touring the UK in April – and he’s delighted. British audiences have “purity of the ears” unfiltered by prejudice, Gregory tells me.
“When you heard the blues, you appreciated the authenticity and spirit, the same with jazz. It makes you feel good, that’s what matters.”
Porter first performed in London to 115 people at Soho’s Pizza Express jazz club in 2011. He never dreamt that seven years later he’d be headlining the Royal Albert Hall. It baffled him even on the night.
“I’m always notoriously last minute, and as I arrived I saw all this traffic outside and people cramming through the doors. I thought, is there another venue inside? Had they come to see someone else?”
But no. 5,000-plus music-lovers were there not for a genre or a random night out but to see Gregory Porter sing his songs. “It was a moment,” ever-modest Gregory, 53, says. “The ovation, the encore, it was just really special. And it just happened to be in my favourite venue.”
It isn’t just his voice, that rich, velvety baritone, that makes Porter special. It’s the feeling he puts into every lyric. He’s had four UK top ten albums, including 2013’s platinum-selling Liquid Spirit – the most streamed jazz record of all time.
“People were interested in my hat, but they were also interested in my voice and my songs,” he says. And he reciprocates the love, waxing lyrically about the rolling beauty of the Cotswolds, where he laps up traditional cream teas, and the seaside charms of Skegness which remind him of family outings to Santa Monica Beach – one part of his childhood unscarred by painful memories.
Porter’s early life reads like a misery memoir, but he urges me not to let that angle dominate the interview. His mother, Miss Ruth, a Baptist minister, had moved to Bakersfield, California, from Shreveport, Louisiana. His father Rufus walked out on them, leaving Ruth to hold down three jobs to raise eight children single-handedly.
They weren’t made welcome. A six-foot cross was burnt outside their house, bottles of urine were thrown through their windows, vile abuse was hurled and his brother Brian was shot but not fatally. Local police didn’t help.
“I was stopped and searched a lot. I can’t attribute it to anything other than being a large black man in a nice neighbourhood,” says Gregory.
His mother’s faith kept them together. All he got from his father was his incredible voice.
American football looked like his escape route. Porter won a scholarship as a lineman to San Diego State University and stood a chance of going pro until a career-ending shoulder injury killed that dream.
“Every college player thinks they can be pro. I was big and fast and thought I could. But I do believe in divine intervention. Music was always my number one passion in my heart…”
Growing up he heard religious gospel music and secular soulful music – “My mother loved Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald,” he recalls. “We used to watch Soul Train, using a coat-hanger as an aerial, holding it high enough to see the likes of Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway.
“In my mid-teens, I started to be interested in the jazz singers, Leon Thomas, Oscar Brown, even Lou Rawls with Tobacco Road.”
His own voice has been compared to Rawls, and also Bill Withers and Teddy Pendergrass. Although defined as jazz, Porter’s music incorporates the blues, soul and gospel.
Ruth died of cancer in 1993 and never saw his success. But her last words to Gregory were “Sing, baby, sing.”
He was a shy choirboy when he sang his first solo in church. “I liked to sing but I didn’t think it could be a profession – even when I studied music at college.”
Porter’s injury and his mother’s death reduced him to “emotional desperation,” he says. He ended up in rehab before travelling to Brooklyn to be with his quick-witted brother Lloyd, “to get inspiration, just to get up in the morning”.
One day he stumbled into a jazz jam session, and kept going back. Spotted by talent scouts, Gregory found himself fronting the cast of Broadway musicals. He only stopped in order to focus on his solo career.
While cheffing at Lloyd’s restaurant, Gregory started singing at neighbourhood nightspots like Solomon’s Porch – “45 seconds from my door” – before landing a weekly residency at St. Nick’s Jazz Pub in Harlem. That led to a deal with US indie label, Motéma.
“People came to St Nick’s from all over and they’d ask me when I was going to play Italy or England or Japan. I didn’t even have a passport!”
His Russian bass-player offered to get them gigs in Russia and Ukraine. They played 70 cities in 2002, touring by train from Moscow to Siberia, where the snow was higher than his hat, and chomping on goat’s head in Kazakhstan.
The Moscow show – at an underground jazz club built he thinks in an old Soviet bunker – was where he met his wife, Victoria. “After she first saw me perform, she believed I had a broken heart,” he says. “She was so surprised to find me laughing and having a beer after the gig.”
They became friends and when she visited New York he volunteered to show her the sights, including Broadway and the first theatre he’d ever performed in – The New Victory on 42nd Street. Friendship blossomed into something more. They married in 2005 and live in his Bakersfield hometown with their sons, Demyan, 11, and Lev, 3.
“I moved back because I needed to find a beauty here; I’ve got a beautiful house and children which goes towards some cleansing of the broken feelings I had growing up as a kid. I’ve moved past all that.”
Victoria’s maiden name, Stepanov, is Ukrainian but her family are Russian, which has caused problems since Putin’s invasion. The boys used to see their Russian grandparents every year in Turkey. Now he says, “We have difficult conversations over the phone. We love them but they’re steeped in propaganda.”
Victoria says Gregory’s best quality is his desire to give everything to his audience. “She’d also say it’s my worst quality and that I spend too much time on the road with the audience…” he chuckles.
He does around 200 shows a year. Partly to pay the bills, partly as a mission. “I get to sing songs about love, optimism, hope and mutual respect in Muslim countries, in Israel, in eastern Europe, western Europe, Africa, Asia…I feel I am carrying a cultural torch for people who proceeded me – carrying a message of love.
“I get to sing songs about love, optimism, hope and mutual respect in Muslim countries, in Israel, eastern Europe, western Europe, Africa, Asia…I feel I am like a travelling troubadour of love, carrying a cultural torch for people who proceeded me, carrying a message of love.
“Everyone and every situation is redeemable. The idea that everything is not lost is sprinkled through my music.”
Signed by jazz label, Blue Note in 2013, Gregory’s sales shot into the stratosphere.
“I love that people have fallen in love with my catalogue, even early songs from the first albums. They tell me my songs have become backgrounds to their lives.”
Along the way he’s opened for Van Morrison at Blenheim Palace, appeared with Stevie Wonder at the Hollywood Bowl and performed at some of the world’s finest jazz clubs including Le Duc des Lombards in Paris, Montecasino’s Teatro in Johannesburg and London’s Ronnie Scott’s.
“Japan does jazz clubs really well,” he says.
In recent year, he has lost one sister, Patrice, to breast cancer and his brother Lloyd died of Covid-related illnesses in 2020. He tells me, “I’m the greatest fan of Dave Chappelle, but I told him the one person I knew who was funnier than you was my brother. He was amazing company.”
Gregory describes his music as, “optimism in the face of difficulty”.
“I’m a messenger for love and optimism,” he says. “And I hope I can continue at this strange time in a strange world. I hope to stay in a place where music is always central. I don’t want to be in a place where I’m just trying to sell records.”
*Gregory Porter’s UK tour begins on April 22 at Brighton Centre. For full tour dates and tickets visit Ticketline.co.uk
